In the Summer of 1981, an international assortment of young people gathered at a public park on the banks of the Missouri River just outside Kansas City. In ten days, they built a 16x24-foot raft from assorted lumber, a telephone pole and thirty-two 55-gallon oil drums. Propelled only by the river current and four 10-foot-long deck-mounted oars, in two months the crew of the "Eulenspiegel" floated 1,420 miles down the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. This documentary monograph is the story of that walking-pace journey down the backbone of America.